Note Towards the Definition
of a Psychedelic Philosophy
Patrick Lundborg
Introduction
Much of what has been written and said about the psychedelic experience over
the past 75 years has been surprisingly narrow in scope. Enthusiasts have been so
bowled over by their early journeys into Innerspace that they’ve rushed to apply
the first paradigm that seemed to fit. Typically, this paradigm has been either
psychotherapeutic or religious. As pointed out in my general study Psychedelia
(2012), the 20th century saga of psychedelic culture is in a way the saga of a series
of failed metaphors. For several decades, learned, enthusiastic men and women
twisted their brains into knots trying to understand, formulate and propagate
the meaning of the psychedelic experience. The majority of their contentions
have turned out to be inaccurate, no matter how great the enthusiasm with
which they were presented. As detailed in Chapter II of the aforementioned
Psychedelia, this sequence of failures was to some extent due to the Zeitgeist and
intellectual state of the mid-20th century.
Today, a decade and a half into a new century, at the final stage of the third
wave of modern Psychedelia (the ‘techno-shamanistic’ phase), the future should
be of greater relevance to us than the past. More people are using psychedelic
drugs today than at any other point in history. Science focuses increasingly
on the operations of the human brain and the mystery of consciousness, and
scientists have been allowed to run experiments with psychedelic compounds
again, after a 40-year moratorium. Currently there are dozens of mainstream
research projects going involving psilocybin, LSD and DMT. The next phase of
Psychedelia is likely to be dominated by the consciousness enigma and its micro
and macro-level implications.
Despite these encouraging developments, there is a troubling lack of
intellectual discussion regarding the psychedelic way of life and the extraordinary
insights and changes that the serotonergic hallucinogens bring about in many
men and women. Coupled with the inability of earlier generations to create a
coherent understanding of Psychedelia as a culture and lifestyle we are currently
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provided with a tabula rasa of sorts. The lack of consensual, fundamental
structures offers the opportunity to start afresh, integrating valuable knowledge
clusters from the past century as one goes along. Ultimately, the objective is
nothing less than the definition of a stand-alone psychedelic philosophy, an
intellectual paradigm through which other phenomena can be analyzed and
evaluated, but also an understanding of the world from which to shape one’s life.
The present notes discuss the principles upon which such an intellectual model
could be raised, and take some steps toward an outline.
As the reader will find, the difficulties involved can be reduced by keeping a
persistent watch on the primary beacon that governs a psychedelic philosophy,
which is the psychedelic experience itself. An effective ‘acid test’ for the progress
of the model checks its truthfulness against the nature and effects of the journey
to Innerspace, both as individual knowledge and as the experience base of
millions of travelogues. Using empirical evidence to validate or refute a general
theory may sound obvious, but only in rare cases has this norm been adhered to
within Psychedelia.
Leary & Kesey
In the 1966 foreword to his hallucinogenic interpretation of the ancient Tao Te
Ching, Dr Timothy Leary wrote:
From the beginning of the Harvard-IFIF-Castalia exploration into
consciousness two facts were apparent. First, that there were no extant maps,
models, myths, theories, languages to describe the psychedelic experience.
Second, the temptation to impose old models, premature theories, must be
avoided…
This would have been an admirable approach, if Leary & co had actually followed
it. However, during those preceding years that he mentions, Leary and his fellow
psychologists had actually done everything they could to ‘impose old models’
on the psychedelic experience, be it Tibetan meditation instruction or psychodynamic ‘imprinting’. By 1966, not much was left of the original Harvard
scientist agenda, and Tim Leary himself was preparing to leave academia behind
and target the youth of America with his psychedelic gospel. His foreword may
have been an attempt to re-write the ‘Harvard-IFIF-Castalia’ group’s history, after
realizing how misguided their numerous attempts at structure and metaphor
had been.
The original 1950s-60s research into mescaline, psilocybin and LSD was
strongly dominated by attempts to pigeonhole and subordinate the psychedelic
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experience into a closely guarded little box within an established field of research.
There were some early enthusiasts who understood not to rationalize the
journey to Innerspace, but instead enjoy and hopefully extend the ride, the most
prominent example being Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters. Kesey’s group of
fun-loving bohemians did on occasion claim to adhere to certain philosophical
and aesthetic principles, but as one looks closer at the statements and events that
form their legacy, the intellectual content becomes inconsistent. What is claimed
to be an artistic or philosophical approach appears more like a behavioristic
principle than anything profound. Tom Wolfe’s 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid
Acid Test discusses in some detail Kesey’s notion that we are ‘watching the movies
of our lives’ due to a millisecond processing delay in our central nervous system.
This observation, that we are forever lagging behind the actual flow of the world,
may at first strike one as an intriguing concept. But like several Merry Prankster
principles, attempts to turn this quirky fact into a general, existential notion
yields a kind of irresponsible nihilism and little else.
As exemplified by familiar cases like Leary and Kesey, the early days of
psychedelic culture displayed only a limited interest in devising a coherent
system of ideas and experiences. Other nexus of psychedelic activity from
the first (1950-1963) and second (1964-1980) phases show similar kinds of
inconsistent, ad hoc intellectual frameworks, even when the outward intentions
seem varied. The reason why usable cultural paradigms failed to emerge even
among its bohemian supporters is that Psychedelia was taken as an attribute, not
the central object. To truly understand the range of human consciousness, both
scientists and laymen need to reverse their perspective and place the psychedelic
experience at the center of the experiment.
Rather than using notions from mainstream religion or psychology as
yardsticks for Psychedelia, the psychedelic experience itself should be the
yardstick by which things like religion and psychology are measured. More than
a catalyst it should be understood as a prism through which the rest of the world
is passing. This seemingly radical view is not unprecedented, but can be found
with several of the ayahuasca/yagé-drinking tribes in Amazonia. The notorious
Jivaro (Shuar) even go so far as to view the hallucinogenic state as the real world,
and the baseline world as an illusion. In the modern West, despite the remarkable
socio-cultural impact that psychedelics have had from Aldous Huxley in 1955
to Terence McKenna in 1995, the potential for Psychedelia as a free-standing
spiritual lifestyle and intellectual frame of reference is seldom discussed.
Western Legacy
Invoked via words or put to use through action, the merits of a psychedelic
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philosophy of life will be examined again and again, at different times and places.
Not just by its adherents, but by critics opposed to the idea of any abstract model
based on the psychedelic drug experience. With its roots in the otherworldly
climate of Innerspace, Psychedelia tends to produce concepts far from the semisecularized monotheism and Cartesian-Newtonian positivism of the West.
This conflict with the local socio-cultural tradition strengthens the experiential
orientation, but even more importantly, it reveals for those concerned that the
psychedelic philosophy of life offers something that existing belief systems do
not, which is the direct experience of the otherworldly.
Dominant ideas, such as Christianity, will replace the citizen’s immediate
experience of its tenets with the publicly sanctioned teaching of Christian beliefs
in schools, mass-media, in the military and so on. These fundamental ideas are
injected into every personal copy of the socio-cultural template and so become
validated as principles of society, even if the individual lacks both faith and
interest. This acculturation of what was originally a radical religious sect has been
so effective that it could afford to restrict the visionary experiences that originally
gave birth to it. The revelation of the Logos and the sacred visions has been
removed to an intermediary class of saints and priests, who as gatekeepers pass
the divine teachings on to the congregation. This model, which is characteristic
of all three major Abrahamic religions from the Middle East, is sustainable and
at times even successful, but the practical value it offers society at large is also the
spiritual loss of the single individual, who is not allowed access to the revelations
of the higher realms.
It is interesting to note that the earliest psychedelic gatherings of the West,
the Great Mystery celebrations at the temple of Eleusis in ancient Greece, were
directed entirely towards the individual’s experience of eternal life and the felt
presence of the gods. After preparation through fasting and physical ordeals,
the initiand at Eleusis was required to drink the hallucinogenic kykeon before
spending the night in the great temple, where visual and aural effects stimulated
the minds of thousands toward a climactic moment of private revelation.
The Great Mysteries were celebrated for nearly 2.000 years. They followed
Mediterranean culture out of the vegetation rites of prehistory into the great
societies of Athens, Alexandria and Rome, influencing the entire duration of
classical antiquity. The experience of Eleusis is so strongly intertwined with
Greco-Roman high cultures that its presence is simply taken for granted by
classic scholars.
The final days of Eleusis coincide with the final days of Rome, as a joint force
of Germanic tribes and Christian conquerors destroyed the great temple around
400 A.D. Emerging as the new dominant force in the Mediterranean region,
the adherents of Christianity were eager to destroy existing polytheistic beliefs
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and nature cults, a show of violent intolerance that coming centuries would find
repeated around the world. Despite the intermingling of these elements in the
Western heritage, the Greco-Roman seeds of our civilization championed a belief
system and a way of life that was profoundly opposed to the Christian notions
that would ultimately emerge as the basis for Occidental society. Central to the
spiritual celebrations at Eleusis stood the individual’s immediate experience of a
higher world, the main principle of a psychedelic philosophy.
Phenomenology
It was suggested above that the psychedelic experience could be used as a prism,
through which our perception of the world might become richer and more
imaginative. In an objective experimental setting however, it is more appropriate
to apply what cybernetic science calls a ‘black box’ model. A black box is an
active process element whose interior design and functionality are unseen and
unknown. What is known is that the black box receives certain in-data and
produces certain results, and from this available information a sufficient image
of the unknown process inside the box is developed.
The black box model is well-suited for the empirical approach that this paper
promotes for understanding the psychedelic experience. A similar conclusion
has been reached by earlier researchers in the hallucinogen field, although their
vantage point is psychological rather than cybernetic. Their paradigm of choice
is the philosophy branch known as phenomenology, a model which in practical
application aligns closely to black box methodology. Both variants operate in a
pure observational mode, registering the data that surface with no hypothetical
result or end-state in play, putting the analysis aside for a later phase. There are
several indications that phenomenology is becoming the gold standard for the
experimental study of psychedelic drugs and their effects. Research elder Ralph
Metzner, who was a vital member of Leary’s group back in the 1960s, points to
the usefulness of a phenomenological approach in his excellent foreword to the
anthology Ayahuasca (2002). Similarly, in Antipodes of the Mind (1999) one of
the most thorough studies of psychedelic states so far, cognitive psychologist
Benny Shanon defines his method as wholly phenomenological.
Looking back on the earlier phases of Psychedelia for traces of phenomenology,
one will find the same combination of bold intention and poor implementation
as the socio-cultural metaphors discussed above. Timothy Leary’s exHarvard group went on record around 1965 stating that their approach was
phenomenological, a claim repeated some 10 years later by Terence McKenna
and his brother Dennis when probing the depths of high-dosage psilocybin trips.
Neither case have left any records behind to indicate any phenomenological
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studies, and in all likelihood these were cases of harmless lip service, by which
‘phenomenology’ simply meant that one paid close attention to what was going
on inside Innerspace. The desire to verbalize and metaphorize the extraordinary
impressions will effectively void the neutral stance of phenomenology; when out
there in the psychedelic state, it seems the temptation for the analytical mind
becomes too strong to resist.
What writers like Metzner, Shanon and Lundborg (in the aforementioned
Psychedelia) describe for the psychedelic research of the 2000s is a phenomenology
rooted in the actual philosophy that bears this name, rather than some loose vow
to be objective and attentive. What this entails is not difficult to understand,
and its practical usefulness should be equally easy to see. Phenomenology
was essentially the brainchild of a single thinker, the German 19th century
philosopher Edmund Husserl. Husserl was dissatisfied with the vagaries and
open contradictions of contemporary philosophy, and from a relatively young
age he strove to develop a philosophical system that was both independent of
other disciplines and as rigorously defined as the natural sciences.
Unlike more recent thought models such as post-structuralism, the principles
of phenomenology are not difficult to grasp, even for a layman unfamiliar with
branch philosophy. Phenomenology, as Husserl devised it, is clearly defined and
intuitively sound. For the psychedelicist, two of Husserl’s fundamental principles
are of particular interest; (A) any mental activity such as looking, thinking,
imagining, dreaming, etc, is constituted by three elements: a) the consciousness that
is engaged in the act, b) the phenomenon that is being perceived, and c) the
act of perception (seeing, thinking, remembering, dreaming…). If either one
of these three elements is removed, there no longer exists a mental activity. It is
vital to understand that Husserl viewed these three elements as bound together
in a totality, and it was this totality that was the main object of his interest. He
dismissed traditional models like the subject/object distinction as insufficient to
truly understand consciousness.
The radical yet conceptually simple model that Husserl proposed leads to
an interesting effect; namely that (B) there is no qualitative distinction between
different types of mental activity, such as imagining, seeing, remembering,
dreaming or hallucinating; nor is there any formal difference between the
thought of something that ‘exists’, such as an apple tree, and something that
probably ‘not exists’, such as a unicorn. To Husserl, these activities all fall under
his same fundamental principle (A). They may be classified as different types of
thought, but can all be described and analyzed by the same simple model.
With this ingenious system, Husserl solved several problems that plagued
earlier models of epistemology (knowledge theory). For the psychedelicist the
advantage is obvious; receiving and documenting the often radical mindstream
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in the hallucinogenic state can be performed in an equal manner to how one
describes an eventful day in a diary, or how one takes down a nocturnal dream.
Assumptions or defensive belittling of the extraordinary input on LSD-type drugs
automatically fall away, since they have no place in phenomenology. Instead, the
method points out the resemblance between writing down a memorable night
dream and the recollection of a powerful sequence in psychedelic Innerspace. No
matter how bizarre or otherworldly, these dreams and drug visions and dizzying
sights all pass through the simple, objective core channel of phenomenology.
An intriguing meeting between Psychedelia and phenomenology occurred
as early as the 1940s, when the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty
underwent a few mescaline experiments in order to develop his theories
on perception. Rarely discussed and in fact unknown to many psychedelic
researchers, this event yielded no major intellectual breakthroughs for MerleauPonty (unlike his colleague Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote the groundbreaking
La Nausée following a horrific mescaline journey) due to the moderate doses
he took, but it provides us with a look at how phenomenology encounters
psychedelics. As a phenomenologist, Merleau-Ponty makes no valuation of his
OEV (open eye visuals) hallucinations, but simply registers what takes place
before his eyes. Distinctions of things as ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ are not made, nor is
there any type of symbolic reading of the visions. Judgment or interpretation
would mean a regression into the primitive forms of epistemology that Husserl
wished to eradicate. Given science’s historical mishandling of LSD it is obvious
that phenomenology, especially the pure Husserlian form described here,
could have offered a terrific framework for psychedelic research, with a fit and
intellectual rigor superior to the psychoanalytical or religious-mystic models that
were invoked in the 1950s-60s.
Purposeless Play
It is vital to understand that phenomenology doesn’t form a closed system that
would make it an idealist or even solipsist philosophy. It does not aspire to
make definitive statements about the world, neither outside us nor inside us.
Merleau-Ponty accepts the logic in extending phenomenology into a complete
philosophical system, but rejects this path in favour of a modern and less definitive
paradigm. As phenomenologists, our view of the world is radically changed, but
the world is not reduced to something only in our own minds; rather it occupies
a peculiar, hypnotic middle ground. The reduction that this modern intellectual
stance occasions is not a reduction of the world or our position in it, but of
the rigid attention we have developed to all sensory and cognitive input. As a
method it ‘…steps back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks
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from a fire; it slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world, and
thus brings them to our notice. It, alone, is consciousness of the world, because
it reveals the world as strange and paradoxical’ (Phenomenology of Perception,
1945).
Another of Husserl’s followers, the German philosopher Eugen Fink, found
a similar transformation of consciousness in the phenomenological reduction,
‘a wonder in the face of the world’. Fink viewed man’s conscious life as an
enthralment with the constant mystery of phenomenological observations, and
he took man’s purpose as to engage in what he called ‘play’. As an expression of
free will and the phenomenological stance, man finds meaning in play, which
forms a microcosmic mirror of a macrocosmic world, abstracted out of his reach.
In play, there are no boundaries for consciousness, and man transcends the
rules and restrictions of his everyday life. As a field of endless possibilities, play
becomes a symbol of the totality of the world, and to engage in play is to come
closer to understanding the full nature of our existence.
With these developments from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Eugen Fink,
phenomenology is brought in the vicinity of what could be called a psychedelic
philosophy. Unlike structuralism, neo-Marxism or psychoanalysis, there is
nothing in phenomenology that contradicts the psychedelic experience. On the
contrary, Fink’s notion of play is reminiscent of the ideas of certain genuinely
psychedelic thinkers, such as Alan Watts. Being a phenomenologist, Fink did
not entertain the notion of a true ‘I’ or ‘self ’, but merely noted that there was an
activity of consciousness. For this reason, Fink’s philosophy has been called ‘play
without anyone playing’. Compare this to The Joyous Cosmology (1962), where
Alan Watts writes: ‘…Life is basically a gesture, but no one, no thing, is making
it. There is no necessity for it to happen, and none for it to go on happening.
For it isn’t being driven by anything; it just happens freely of itself. It’s a gesture
of motion, of sound, of colour, and just as no one is making it, it isn’t happening
to anyone. There is simply no problem of life; it is completely purposeless play’.
Alan Watts arrived to this view by way of LSD and his substantial training in
Eastern religion. His vantage point was completely different than Fink’s, yet the
ultimate insights that the two men describe seem close. There are clearly parallels
between the Buddhism and Taoism that Watts knew, and the basic tenets of
European phenomenology. However, the ego-less play that Eugen Fink and
Alan Watts independently describe is neither Buddhist-Taoist nor classic idealist,
but something else; perhaps it could be called a psychedelic existentialism,
casting a wider net than phenomenology. Again like Fink, Watts pointed to the
importance of this ‘purposeless play’:
‘No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time. He is
like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle
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[...] our play is never real play because it is almost invariably rationalized; we do
it on the pretext that it is good for us. [...] The play of life is at first apprehended
rather cynically as an extremely intricate contest in one-upmanship, expressing
itself deviously even in the most altruistic of human endeavours. [...] But finally,
rapacious and all-embracing cosmic selfishness turns out to be a disguise for the
unmotivated play of love.’ (The Joyous Cosmology)
As I show in Psychedelia, Watts most likely picked up the phrase ‘purposeless
play’ from avant composer John Cage, who used it in lectures to explain his
new and radical aesthetics. Watts’ familiarity with New York City avant-garde
was manifested in his groundbreaking free-form acid jam recording This Is IT
(1962), frequently described as the first genuinely psychedelic LP. While the
ongoing dialogue between his Eastern metaphysics and a series of psychedelic
trips bred the unorthodox existentialist world-view described above, it is evident
that cutting edge aesthetic theory also informed Watts’ activities and provided
him with the psychedelic key phrase ‘purposeless play’. The This Is IT album
has been written about at length elsewhere; its connection to Watts’ LSD
experiments is evident from the back liner notes, which quote directly from The
Joyous Cosmology.
Only a year or so later, a new generation of non-academic psychedelicists
would appear not far from Watts’ San Francisco home turf, putting into practice
Watts’ hypothetical notion of purposeless play as a lifestyle. Ken Kesey & the
Merry Pranksters used their own set of trippy catch phrases to signal their
presence, but there are few better ways to describe their free-form multimedia
mind games than purposeless play. In interviews, such as the one heard on the
Acid Test LP (1966) Kesey would insist upon the meaningless nature of their
goals, and how they would also try to undermine the efforts to reach the goals.
This, we are told, all takes place because the Pranksters ‘have nothing else to do’.
Amusement for no reason and with no actual goal; purposeless play.
This perspective bears upon the Prankster group’s lack of a genuinely
operative philosophy or aesthetic theory that was discussed above, suggesting
that the playful phenomenology of Fink and the purposeless, ego-less diversions
of Watts could in fact serve as pre-existing models for Kesey & co, instilled
by zeitgeist and the psychedelic experience. Alas, the lack of a fully developed
intellectual framework (beyond the active principle of purposeless play in the
movie of life) made the Pranksters overly dependent on specific personalities
rather than creativity, which contributed to their fairly rapid downfall in a San
Francisco scene that was becoming self-aware of its collective significance.
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Psychedelic Core Values
Perhaps because their most vital heritage was socio-cultural rather than
intellectual, the Merry Pranksters have remained relatively immune to the
passing of time and the often critical revaluations of the counterculture 1960s.
When the ‘rave’ scene emerged in the late 1980s, psychedelic veterans were
quick to point out the similarity to the old Acid Tests around the SF Bay Area.
The lingering relevance of Kesey’s group to underground culture in general and
Psychedelia in particular is linked to one of the fundamental values that inform
a psychedelic philosophy of the West, which is the belief in and practicing of
hedonism. As shown above, Alan Watts referred to this kind of psychedelic
existentialism as ‘purposeless play’, while the Pranksters thought of it as a ‘movie
of life’. Hedonism is the celebration of the present moment, a giving in to the
natural euphoria of the here and now.
A 3000-year arc connects the Dionysian festivals of ancient Greece with the
psychedelic parties that defined the mid-‘60s (the Millbrook weekends, the Acid
Tests, Trips Festival, Human Be-In, Monterey Pop) and the all-night dances of
today’s neo-hippie Goa culture. None of these gatherings were revolutionary
think-tanks or cutting edge artist collectives, but events of joy and exuberance,
an unconditional championing of the glory of human life made manifest by
LSD and its sister hallucinogens. Psychedelic hedonism is not a wish to escape,
nor is it a neurophysical effect of hyper-stimulant drugs: it is a core element in
the psychedelic way of life, rooted in profound individual revelations of higher
states. Aldous Huxley put it most succinctly: the world, it seemed to him after a
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few mescaline experiences, was ‘alright’. This insight calls for a celebration.
A second fundamental value of Psychedelia which is both linked and
juxtaposed with the hedonistic strain is holism. Psychedelic holism is not some
vague phrase on a Mahatma Gandhi t-shirt, but a core principle that emanates
out of the uncharted depths of consciousness. To truly understand what is
meant by holism in a psychedelic philosophy, you need to get far out enough
in Innerspace so that you perceive and understand the notion that the world is
constructed of energy, and that the same type of energy is everywhere, even in
conceptually dead things such as rocks and buildings. Some may embrace this
energy as ‘sacred’; others may choose to simply register it as a visual representation
of the micro-physical plane. Either way, the constantly buzzing transformations
of energy among the elementary particles are laid bare for you to see. How and
if you interpret this experience is subjective and non-vital, the lasting insight is
the holistic homogeneity of the world.
Whatever the cosmos is made up of, it is the same fundamental energy
everywhere. The Tibetan Buddhists have a terrific term for this; they call it ‘onetaste’, meaning that for your senses and your cognitive mind, everything ‘tastes’
the same once you reach a certain level of transcendental insight. This state is not
necessarily the experience of non-duality, but it is at least the perception of nonduality, and as such it represents a substantial gain on the spiritual path. Indeed,
a Platonic/Neo-platonic interpretation of the psychedelic-holistic revelation
would be that one has left the mundane plane of emanated forms and ascended
to the level of ideas. This has a certain amount of historical justification, since
both Plato and several of his followers partook in the celebrations at Eleusis.
The few documents that refer to Eleusis (despite sworn secrecy) talk of the peak
experience of the hallucinogenic night in the temple as an understanding of
eternal life and the existence of a transcendental world.
Pantheism is the third psychedelic core value. Clearly related to holism, its
specific traits need to be distinguished for a full conceptual understanding.
Holism is essentially the result of a vision of homogenous energy which is
frequently experienced in the higher states. Pantheism is primarily a mundane,
earthbound philosophy which usually emerges from a different experiential path
than holism. The concept behind pantheism says that everything that is alive
is charged with the same presence, or spirit, or god. The orientation is towards
animate agents only, meaning living organisms; some might limit it to higher
animals only, which would be considered to have a soul. Again, the personal
definition is less important than the fundamental experience from which
pantheism emerges in an almost automatic manner.
In the psychedelic state there will come a passage where you seem able to
see through present organisms and discover their true core. If this occurs, the
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discovery is usually that all these living things are alike at the core; animated by
the same drive, or energy, or spirit or god. This is usually a humbling experience
as the subject realizes the arrogance of his assumed human superiority over
animals and plants, and questions his or her right to dominate organisms whose
principle of life is the same as one’s own. It is no coincidence that many acidheads become vegetarians, or that almost all higher spiritual schools proscribe
vegetarianism. Not because you feel ‘sorry’ for animals, but because you are
violating a sacred presence whose existence you yourself have felt. The pantheistic
insight brings an important ethical dimension to Psychedelia.
Pantheism as a revealed philosophy of life may emerge out of holism, or
precede the holistic vision during the same psychedelic experience, but it is the
present author’s belief that the pantheistic vision arises out of a wholly separate
mindstream. It is possible to receive the pantheistic message without entering
the non-dualistic ego-less vision of holism; depending on set, setting and
dosage, as always. The pantheistic insight is dualist and organic in its nature,
whereas the holistic insight is non-dualist and cosmic. Some might perceive the
pantheistic core as a kind of transcendental fiber around which the myriad of
living entities are formed, leading towards a radical form of Gnosticism, or the
Hindu dichotomy of the Atman and Brahman.
Another perspective validated by the Eleusinian-Platonic model is to view
the pantheist as someone who has ascended to a higher spiritual state, from
which he can recognize spiritual qualities in the material plane otherwise hidden
from human eyes. The ascension of layers is not only typical for the psychedelic
journey, but also a model with a Neo-Platonic implication. Plotinus and the
later Neo-Platonists strove to examine the higher, formless planes while Plato
had restricted his cosmology to one undifferentiated higher world. A charting
of the psychedelic experience will favor the gradual Neo-Platonic structure, in
the sense that Innerspace displays topology and amplitude, in addition to its
horizontal vastness. The vital facts remain untarnished by these speculations—
the pantheistic impulse was present at Eleusis 3000 years ago, and it remains
present in the psychedelic experience that people are embarking on today.
The Double Positive of Psychedelia
A significant contribution to the allure of the psychedelic lifestyle comes from
the fact that it is a philosophy that does not deal in negatives or contradictions.
Psychedelia’s fundamental message is to enjoy yourself in your present time,
respect life and respect nature, and in time prepare yourself for ascension to the
transcendental state that the hallucinogenic experience showed you exists. This
double positive stands very much in contrast with the Abrahamic religions and
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their rigid dichotomies, and even the Eastern religions, despite their flexibility
and variation, cannot really accommodate the combination of pantheism,
hedonism and Neo-Platonism that a tentative psychedelic philosophy might
embrace.
As one familiarizes oneself with the psychedelic perspective, it becomes
increasingly clear how remarkably sinister the traditional religious schools are.
The body is there usually said to be evil, as are normal human desires, and personal
guilt over supposed transgressions become liturgical weapons for the ordained
religious teacher, who alone is allowed to communicate with the godhead, which
in its monotheistic domain is as fixated upon Manichean dualism and human
behavior as everything else in the old Middle Eastern belief systems.
Nor is there relief in the revelation of a higher transcendental state that was
offered the initiands at Eleusis and which motivated their jubilant celebration,
since this experience too remains the property of the religious middle-man such
as a priest, rabbi or imam. In fact, private visions of high spiritual realms may
expose the congregation member to accusations of heresy rather than a vital step
forward on the path. A direct comparison between the tenets of a psychedelic
philosophy of life and the leading world religions yields so little conceptual
overlap that the situation looks more like a direct conflict than a disagreement.
That Christian forces from the East led the attack and destruction of the Great
Temple at Eleusis seems entirely logical in view of the respective teachings.
Indigenous cultures around the world, not least in the Americas, would come
to find their pantheistic belief systems eradicated along with their villages by
invading Christian warriors.
As for the double positive of Psychedelia, it is possible to find instances of
ideas along this route in modern Western culture. However, the picture is made
clearer if the core values of hedonism, holism and pantheism are augmented
with another vital element in psychedelic culture, which is utopianism. The drive
to create a psychedelic Utopia is so common that it seems almost inevitable
among long-running, coherent groups of ‘acidheads’. The Utopia can take many
forms, from the anarchic jet set party at Millbrook to the large experiment in
self-subsistence at Stephen Gaskin’s Farm. The utopian idea itself can be tracked
backwards to the core values of pantheism – to live close to nature – and
hedonism – to enjoy life in one’s own way. But other and more specific factors
also informed this drive, which are more of a socio-cultural nature and needn’t
be covered here. What is relevant is the frequency with which the utopian project
emerges among psychedelic enclaves after a certain time. Any model that deals
with a psychedelic philosophy of life should recognize the utopian aspect as
integral to the enterprise.
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Patterns of Psychedelization
The relation between the utopian drive and the double positive of a psychedelic
philosophy can be discerned among certain artists who have made significant
contributions to the field of Psychedelia. An interesting parallel emerges from a
close study of two seemingly very disparate icons, the Nobel Prize winning author
Hermann Hesse and the legendary acid rock group the 13th Floor Elevators.
Their preoccupation with psychedelic lifestyles is evident for all to see in works
such as Hesse’s The Steppenwolf and Journey To The East, and the Elevators’ Roller
Coaster (an anthem for hallucinogenic hedonism) and Slip Inside This House
(both with lyrics by the group’s intellectual leader Tommy Hall). Much has
already been written about these works, but the thematic correspondence that
spans across several works of Hesse and the Elevators is rarely discussed. What
one finds, beyond their shared interest in higher states of consciousness, is a
near-identical thematic arc which in turn matches the psychedelic philosophy
discussed in the present article.
The arc takes its beginning with an initiation into hallucinogenic Innerspace,
and the spontaneous enjoyment of one’s newfound world (hedonism;
Steppenwolf; Roller Coaster). This is followed by the necessary deepening of
the experience into the transcendental state of ego-loss and the emergence of
a spiritual revelation (holism; Siddhartha; Kingdom Of Heaven). The third step
finds enlightened psychedelic beings developing a shared spiritual view of the
world and tightening their bonds via mental explorations (pantheism; Journey to
the East; Slip Inside This House). The fourth and final step is the impulse towards
tribal Utopia, wherein the members of the psychedelic group retreat from the
world to set up an ideal community where they will enjoy the double positive of
purposeless play in ordinary reality, illuminated by the beckoning transcendental
glow of higher realities (utopianism; The Glass Bead Game; Dust).
It should be stressed that the isomorphic pattern found in these otherwise
divergent sources can be identified in several other cultural contexts where use of
psychedelic drugs occur; the comparison between Hesse and the Elevators is just
one example. The long night of initiation at Eleusis began with hedonism and
moved into holistic-pantheistic revelation as the kykeon’s effect peaked inside the
participants. The first utopian vision, Plato’s Republic, is quite possibly inspired
by what he himself saw in the Great Temple. In our modern times, one could
dissect the socio-cultural development of the psychedelic underground of the
1960s and find the same schematic process; from the hedonistic acid parties of
1965, via the closely bonded “love generation” of 1966-67, up to the communalrural impulse of the later years. Hedonism, holism, pantheism and utopianism
linger as psychedelic effects on the individual micro-level, soon to be reflected
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back on a socio-cultural macro-level like a fractal pattern receding to reveal
identical supra-levels. The development also illustrates the difference between
how a psychedelic community and a religious community emerge. In the case of
the latter the profound vision of revealed truth comes first, and it is usually only
incarnated in a single prophet-founder, while the hedonistic element is often
completely absent.
Conclusion
These notes suggest several aspects worth considering in the development of
a psychedelic philosophy of life. The fundamental principle is that anything
included in the system must have evolved naturally from the psychedelic
experience itself. External concepts are only brought in when they fill a specific
need. Such is the case with Husserl’s phenomenology, which is a tool that helps
the psychedelicist to stay objective and attentive before the rich and often chaotic
flow of the experience, and in addition works to remind one that visions received
in hallucinogenic Innerspace are of equal validity as visions received in dreams or
meditation. Phenomenology reduces the drama of the experience, it helps one
to preserve the vital information given in the higher state, and (in the mode of
Eugen Fink and Alan Watts) it has a corresponding active principle in the notion
of purposeless play.
The psychedelic experience itself can be understood by Lundborg’s General
Experience Model, which describes the subject’s progress through levels of
altered cognition as a typical journey unfolds over several hours. The model
highlights the importance of dosage for reaching the higher states, a factor
often forgotten when set and setting are discussed. The GEM is not a ‘map’
to follow, but a generalized model drawn from thousands of observations and
calibrated against older models. It is intended primarily to identify one’s degree
of psychedelization (i.e: ‘how high was I?’), and to indicate approximately how
the path unfolds. Students of Neo-Platonism may find it particularly easy to
adapt the levelled model, while the practical handling of the experience can be
developed by studying principles from shamanism for navigation and interaction
in altered states of consciousness. From traditional meditation the technique of
maintaining ‘the Witness’ and other ways to regain control of one’s mindstream
are excellent tools.
The Psychedelia book to which this paper corresponds stresses the need for
preparation by way of ‘Gnothi Seauton 101’. This ground course to ‘know
thyself ’ refers to a basic cleansing of psycho-dynamic baggage, either through
therapy or meditation, in order to reduce the risk for strong adverse reactions on
the initial psychedelic journeys. Ego-defenses, fixed ideas, repressed material and
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similar mental obstacles can of course be dealt with in the hallucinogenic state,
but it is a demanding and risky type of self-treatment. As one becomes familiar
with the psychedelic landscape of one’s consciousness, there is frequently a
development of one’s personality following the first few experiences. This may be
subtle at first, but in hindsight stand out as a major turning point. Not everyone
is affected in a lasting manner, but those who felt attracted to Psychedelia even
before taking a hallucinogen almost invariably become enthusiasts and even
advocates for this way of life.
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